When Rav Yitzḥak Luria, zt”l, also known as the Holy ARI, davvened in Eretz Yisroel he brought about a series of liturgical innovations witnessed in later siddurim. His particular nusaḥ bridged minhag Ashkenaz and minhag Sefarad (the customs of the Rheinland Jews and the customs of the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula) with the teachings of his school of Kabbalists. When two centuries later, the Ḥassidic movement blossomed in Eastern Europe, it found purchase in Lithuania among a mystical school centered around Rav Schneur Zalman of Lyadi, the Alter Rebbe and founder of the ḤaBaD movement within Ḥassidism. The Alter Rebbe compiled his own siddur, the Siddur Torah Ohr, “according to the tradition of the ARI.”

The most recent edition of this siddur, the Siddur Tehillat HaShem, was published with additions of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, and is found widespread across the many ḤaBaD Houses and other institutions affiliated with the ḤaBad movement he once presided over. Neither text of the Siddur Torah Ohr, nor the Siddur Tehillat Hashem is extant in a free digital edition. The Open Siddur Project is busy transcribing the contents of the Siddur Torah Ohr to contribute a digital edition to the Public Domain.

Transcribing any text can be arduous, if rewarding work for a single person. That is why we are crowd-sourcing this effort. Little did we know that a young Ḥasid, Shmueli Gonzales, had already taken it upon himself the heavy burden of converting this work from printed text to digital, machine readable Hebrew letters.

Shmueli went ahead and formatted the text in the Open Document formatted files below. (You can use LibreOffice to open or edit them.) The current version (3.0+) of the modules are formatted entirely with free and open source fonts.

Shmueli describes his work in this way:

It is provided via the Internet as a resource for study and for use for prayer when a Siddur is not immediately available. This text was created with the many people in mind that travel through out the world and find, to their horror, that their Siddur is missing. Now it’s accessible for all of us in those emergency situations.

One should not rely only upon this text. A Siddur is not just an order of prayer. It is intended to serve as a text for education in Jewish tradition and the keeping of mitzvot. This text lacks many of those qualities. Thus, one should own a Siddur of their own and study it.

Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady (Hebrew: שניאור זלמן מליאדי‎) (September 4, 1745 – December 15, 1812 O.S. / 18 Elul 5505 - 24 Tevet 5573), was the founder and first Rebbe of the Ḥassidic movement known as ḤaBaD, then based in Liadi, within Imperial Russia. He was the author of many works, and is best known for Shulḥan Arukh HaRav, the Tanya, and his Siddur Torah Or.

This is amazing. I am a special ed teacher and there has never been a nussach ari template for me to work with to make special pages for my students you are a life saver! Can you tell me when you are planning on putting up Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Machzorim as well as selichos for the fast days (also the other yomim tovim tefilos like Hoshanos and Atah Hareisah…)

Thank you for the correction. Besides updating the files shared here, I’ve also updated our transcription of the 1940 Shulzinger Bros. Siddur Torah Ohr, here. If you can, please help us to complete that transcription.

You can do it. It’s a challenge though to include all the niqud (vocalization marks) together with tagin (letter crowns). Check out the fonts page for “Stam” fonts supporting niqud. Shlomo Orbach’s semiStam font seems to strike the right balance for me. The ODT files are editable, so experiment which fonts work for you.

I did edit the ODT files. I produced a BEAUTIFUL Tisch Buch (Table book) That I use. That is how I noticed that in the Ezra fonts, it is sometimes hard to distinguish the Daled and the Reish.
My suggestion is in case the files from this site are updated.

No pictures, just (Beautiful) text. I have no objections to posting the entire work here, but it is simply changing fonts and some minor layout changes of Shmueli’s Awesome work. I hope to participate in this most awesome work of yours by doing some transcribing of the Siddur Torah Ohr and by spreading the word to other interested people. Thanks and keep up this GREAT work.

It appears that Psalm 67 is not correct in many or all of the above files. It looks like the incorrect version was copied and pasted in all the above files. Below is the correction. I am still working on / hoping to be able to review and transcribe the on-line Siddur Torah Or.
Thanks again for the AWESOME work.

[…] You can download the blessings for the Sefirat haOmer graciously hosted by The Open Siddur Project HERE, as well as find all other related liturgical transcriptions. Like this:LikeBe the first to like […]

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